[Veltzeh]: 39.The Heritage of Humankind.Tales from Kyerrion.32

Availon had been confused and broken for a long time by eir recollection. Ey barely cared about what happened to em and had been constantly crying. After the femehans had left em, Availon cried for two hours before eir mind started clearing up, though ey had enough sense of future to create a vague mental connection to Tegafel and the others—it was enough to track them with effort and would likely not be noticed. Now the violent thoughts were gone, now no one wanted to hurt em, now no one was there to insult em. Crying did em no good. Ey started to gather the pieces of eir intelligent mind, and by evening, had them in some sort of order. Availon conditioned emself to be goal-oriented and started climbing down, using the rope the femehans had more or less unwillingly given em. Ey traveled as far as ey could and settled to sleep.

After some hours of nightmares, ey woke up and scanned a large area of the mountains using eir far-walker abilities—ey would need help from garandals now. Ey did not really find anything definite, but thought ey could vaguely sense some sort of population south of em, so south ey went. Once ey had gotten near the bottom of the canyon, traveling turned out to be fairly easy and ey reached a community of garandals by evening.

Availon was ridiculously relieved to sense the place and the people, but was then overcome by fear; what if the garandals would also consider Availon a traitor? After all, they were bound to do some sort of cooperation with the femehans and Availon could not figure out which way they would sway. Ey stopped eir climbing short, curled up and started crying. After about half an hour, ey heard a garandal shouting to em in Kralan. Availon moved and the garandal switched to common Gomanian. Ey asked whether Availon needed help. Availon admitted that ey did and soon ey was thrown a rope. Using it, ey climbed the final cliff up to the edge of the garandal village. Three young people stood in front of em, looking at em in a bit of awe and more confusion. Tears fell from Availon's eyes.

"P-please... I... I seek a place to rest... for a few days," ey said, eir voice faltering. Ey could barely keep emself from breaking down. The young garandals looked concerned above anything else. One of them took Availon's backpack and the two others took eir hands and guided em through the village to a relatively magnificent house. They fetched the owner of the house and explained the situation in Kralan. The owner replied something and then spoke to Availon in common Gomanian:

"Please, come in. Do you want to rest, eat or get cleaned up first?" Availon nearly burst into tears and then started crying quietly. The older garandal took eir hand and said: "You can rest and clean up in a bath. We'll prepare one for you." Availon took off eir shoes and the garandal walked em through the house while giving orders to some younger garandals. "My name is Verko-Merra and I'm the elder and ruler of this village."

"I-I'm Availon Gandeheilei... A-and thank you for allowing... allowing me to rest here."

Verko-Merra led Availon into a bathroom that had a bathtub in it. Even though garandals were fairly small, the tub was big enough for Availon. Verko-Merra had Availon sit on a bench, commanded someone to help Availon undress and then held eir head comfortingly. Ey raised a curious eyebrow when ey saw Availon's belly. "Are you pregnant?" Availon blocked the question from reaching eir conscious mind and did not reply. Ey could not handle the issue at the moment. Verko-Merra did not push the issue and instead issued some more orders while figuring out Availon's body temperature. Three garandals had started heating the somewhat complicated system that formed the bathing tub. The system comprised some sort of fireplace on the floor, a tub-like metal sheet over it and another, more tub-like structure over the first one. It seemed to guarantee that the actual tub would not get too hot.

After a few moments, the bath started getting ready and Availon went into the tub. Ey was immersed in warm water and was relaxed and half-asleep in a minute. Ey vaguely felt some careful and light hands on eir body, washing em and stroking em. Availon fell asleep.

Verko-Merra woke up the galanfetzcan after ey had slept close to two hours. Though still tired and weak, Availon felt better and enjoyed it while two garandals rinsed and treated eir body. Some substance was put over eir wounds and then they were tied up, even though they did not bleed. Availon was given eir clean set of clothes and some extra clothes as well. Availon was too tired to wonder why being this warm felt this good—usually ey would have been sweating. Ey was then directed into a dining hall, where food was served. Many garandals were there as well and they all welcomed Availon. Availon felt instantly better—the positive thoughts of the people were a very effective antidepressant. Ey got a bit more social and talked despite eir tiredness, though not about eir wounds or why ey was there in the first place. The garandals were considerate enough not to ask.

After they had eaten, Availon was directed to a bed that had been prepared for em earlier. It was warm, soft and clean and Availon fell asleep almost as soon as ey had settled into it.



When Availon next woke up, it seemed to be afternoon. Ey rolled around in the bed, enjoying every comfortable sleeping position thoroughly, until someone came into the room.

"Ah, you are awake. Do you feel better now?" asked the garandal. Ey was also somewhat old, but not as old as the ruler of the village.

"Yes, thank you." Availon smiled and stood up from the bed.

"The others are still sleeping, but I can get you something to eat if you like."

"I would appreciate that, thank you. I can eat a small snack now and then wait until the others wake up."

The garandal nodded and led Availon into the kitchen. Availon helped to prepare eir own breakfast—garandals could always appreciate help when it did not require giving advice and explanations.

"You don't remember me, do you? You were quite tired in the night."

"No, I must admit that what happened in the evening is rather foggy..."

"I'm Korrakra-Harje. I'm Verko-Merra's partner." The garandal smiled at Availon. Availon responded and started eating. "Do you wish to share why you are here?"

"I... hm. I would like to think that through myself. My mind is quite messed up, still, and I doubt I could give you a coherent report. I would like to tell of my travels at night, if that would be proper."

"Certainly."

Korrakra-Harje told Availon a few more generalities, after which Availon went back into eir room and lay down to rest and go through all what had happened. Ey found all the mind-blocks ey had created before going to Gaoranola and now started undoing them. They were fairly tricky things, even for em, but ey had created them emself and could eventually bypass them. Many of the things made more sense now, though it did not make the memories of torture and interrogation any better. Ey also felt very guilty for Tegafel, whose emotions of betrayal ey still remembered. Ey had not thought that Tegafel would react so strongly.

Availon spent some more time organizing eir thoughts and trying to figure out what to do now. Thoughts of the future and especially Tegafel made em somewhat depressed, but the feeling passed somewhat when ey joined the garandals again.

Late in the night, Availon started explaining eir situation to Verko-Merra, Korrakra-Harje, a social worker and some very smart engineer. The social worker mostly managed the inventory and distribution of goods among the people and the number of people and seemed to work as a psychologist as well—the village had no far-walkers. The engineer was Verko-Merra's grandchild and was mostly there because ey wanted to be there.

"I've been traveling around the Forest mountains and Watery Mountains for nearly three years now. I'm a diplomat and negotiator; I came here to urge the femehans to break their alliance with the jinhaliares. It did not really work out well this last time..."

"Why would you want the alliance broken?" asked Verko-Merra.

"They are going to start going to war eventually, and that will result in the loss of countless of lives. They might even start threatening areas like this where they can't live."

"Why?"

"I would not know, but the jinhaliares are not exactly known for their excellent choices in picking the areas where they war."

"But don't the jinhaliares mostly have some grudge with your kind? Why would they attack us? And femehans don't tend to arrange attacks into places where they know they can't live."

"You are right. But still, wouldn't it be better if there were no warring at all?"

"I suppose so."

"Yes... So, previously I mostly spent time trying to kill off important jinhaliares who were residing in femehan nations. I did that when I went to Gaoranola, but then as I attempted to modify the minds of their ruling council, they discovered me and you can see the result."

"I see. Well, at least you aren't dead! I'd have thought they would kill you or mutilate you."

"They assumed that the other galanfetzcans would take too harsh a revenge if they did so."

"Ah, relations, I see. Must be useful."

"I had another person with me, a femehan called Tegafel. Ey was exiled as well, but they decided to escort em all the way... Me they just threw down a cliff. I made em think that ey worked willingly for me, but the other femehans unraveled that and now ey feels nothing but contempt toward me."

"Well, that's what you get for modifying eir mind."

Availon wanted to tell them that Tegafel had allowed it, but did not want to risk it. "I regret that I did it..."

"Would you have regretted it if you hadn't been caught?"

"...No."

"Ah, double standard."

"I regret that Tegafel is feeling so bad now."

Verko-Merra nodded approvingly. "Well, you're quite an adventurer. What are you planning to do now? Go home? Though I doubt you'll make it in that condition, unless there's a galanfetzcan community nearby. Or if you use one of those airships of yours." Availon looked down at eir slightly swelled belly and knew well enough that soon ey would not be able to travel. "Why on Earth did you let yourself be impregnated?"

"I didn't have a choice."

The garandals went silent. "Oh... I'm... I'm sorry." They had not really thought that a galanfetzcan could be impregnated against eir will—an accident could of course have happened, but Availon did not have a partner along and had not said that ey would have had a partner before.

Availon sensed the shock and wanted to alleviate it. "It's alright. I'm not quite sure how it managed to happen. It did not feel wrong... though I would like to not go into details about it."

"Of course."

After a small pause, Availon continued: "I suppose I'll try to find Tegafel and make things well between us again."

"By modifying eir mind again?"

"No. There is something else involved... but it is very complicated as well. But I do fear that Tegafel would not accept me again..."

"I would be surprised if ey did. But I wish you well nevertheless. I assume you are planning to leave?"

"Yes."

"When?"

"I'm not sure... I'm barely able to travel and no doubt I will need some equipment."

"We can supply you. We would like something in return, though."

"You will get it."



Availon instructed the garandals to build a small hot-air balloon; it came out similarly as the one ey had had constructed last winter. In return, ey mostly shared information, since ey did not have anything else to give. The garandals were satisfied with information on how to better their insulation techniques. The balloon was prepared rather quickly, and Availon left in two days. Ey did not really use the balloon much—it was a climbing tool above anything else.

Availon used eir abilities to track the femehans and though ey would have traveled faster by following them by road, ey was fairly certain that ey would not have been able to move fast enough to catch up with Tegafel, so eir chance was to try to cut in front of em.

Ey was a little worried when the femehans reached the border of Gaoranola and Fetormana, since if Tegafel went to Fetormana and not the Flowing Passages, Availon would not be able to reach em. Ey was also quite sure that the officials of Fetormana had not yet forgotten eir doings there and might even be able to recognize em. However, Tegafel headed to the Flowing Passages.

Availon faced plenty of difficult spots but easily overcame them with eir balloon. Ey also followed Tegafel, who also had an easy journey along a river. However, the femehan became to a halt soon when ey came face-to-face with a waterfall. Availon could tell that ey thought eir escorts had lied to em. Tegafel did not turn back though, and instead started climbing up the cliffs beside the waterfall. It took Tegafel a long time to do that, and Availon nearly caught up with em then.